


Eggs Bene-fit

by SpringZephyr



Category: Inazuma Eleven: Orion no Kokuin
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:28:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24939085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpringZephyr/pseuds/SpringZephyr
Summary: Mansaku gets tasked with making breakfast for everyone on Inazuma Japan. Including Atsuya, whom he only recognizes as "that guy who insulted his father's restaurant during the Football Frontier". (Mansaku/Atsuya friendship)
Relationships: Fubuki Atsuya & Mansaku Yuuichirou
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	Eggs Bene-fit

**Author's Note:**

> This is the story of how I wrote a fic and later realized hotel stoves probably aren't a thing. I've been inside, like, one hotel in my entire life. But this fic is over 2k words long, so I might as well post it anyway. T_T
> 
> Why do I write about food so much anyway. It's like I'm a food author now.

"Mansaku, can you make me an omelette?"

"Again?" Mansaku sighed. Every time they ended up in a hotel room that had a kitchen unit, Asuto asked him to make him an omelette. Sometimes it was a scrambled egg instead. The downside of staying in all these posh, Football Frontier funded hotels was that they usually included every amenity a person could think of. "Asuto, we don't have any – "

He didn't get to finish his sentence when Coach Kinun walked through the door, carrying an entire box of eggs. The wholesale size, that came with about seventy eggs stacked on top of one another, that he normally only saw in the catalogs his father ordered wholesale sushi supplies from. "Good morning, Mansaku! You woke up just in time!"

Li Hao followed him inside, carrying two grocery bags of bacon and cheese and rice. A few more things were hiding at the bottoms of the bags, out of Mansaku's sight. At that point, he realized his fate had already been decided.

"I would like eggs benedict," Kinun said.

"Scrambled eggs and bacon," Li Hao said. At least he was simple.

"Oh, Mansaku is awake already?" Mansaku gawked as Hiroto made his way into the room, awake and fully dressed earlier than anyone would have expected him to be. They weren't even staying in the same unit. "Great! I want an omurice."

Mansaku tugged down the brim of his baseball cap and sighed. He hadn't changed out of his pajamas yet, but that cap was an essential part of any outfit... or so he'd convinced Kirina, when the other boy had asked him about it once.

"Don't you guys want to use the room service?" Mansaku asked. "Or the breakfast buffet?"

"Mansaku's cooking tastes better," Asuto replied immediately.

"We can't let these eggs go to waste," said the coach.

The other two answered him in the order they arrived, "The buffet costs extra, so the Football Frontier isn't paying for it" and "I really like it when Mansaku cooks". A new voice joined the group, saying, "I already checked, and the buffet doesn't offer French style omelettes."

Kidou too, huh?

"I give up." Mansaku plugged in both of the room's counter top stoves, and set to work looking for the pots and pans he needed.

At least Kidou had had the decency to check out the buffet first. And he was actually staying in the same unit, unlike Hiroto –

"I love it when Mansaku is on breakfast duty!"

and Goujin?!

"By the way," the coach offered him a wry grin, "I maaaay have told the entire team last night that we were having a breakfast buffet of our own. Consider it a team building exercise! The others should be arriving soon."

XXX

"You guys know I work in a sushi restaurant, right?" Mansaku asked.

"I-I know," Asuto replied. "But you're really good at cooking in general!"

Mansaku turned away, so Asuto couldn't see his somewhat sheepish smile. Truthfully, he didn't mind cooking that much, and with Asuto offering to be his sous chef and Kirina helping out on dishes, it hadn't gone badly at all. In the span of two hours, they'd somehow crammed an entire team of footballers into one hotel room, and he'd managed to make breakfast for all of them. Coach's eggs benedict, then Li Hao's, Hiroto's, and Kidou's breakfasts; scrambled eggs for Kozoumaru and Iwato, fried eggs for Aphrodi, and Gouenji, and french toast for Kazemaru and Saginuma. Nearly everyone else had asked for omurice, the favorite breakfast of Japanese champions.

"W-well... it's not like eggs and sushi have anything in common, but I know my way around a kitchen."

He could barely hear Asuto's reply over the noise of the kitchen, but the chatter reminded him of the sushi restaurant at home. On busy afternoons, the place was packed with customers like this – a little older, mostly trade workers taking their lunch breaks, but energetic and filled with vibrant conversation all the same.

Kirina did a quick headcount, pointing a finger at each individual as he added them to his mental list. "We're missing someone," he said finally.

"Ah, that's – "

As if on cue, the bedroom door to their suite opened one more time. The last person Mansaku wanted to see stepped out, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. The mess of peach hair currently resembled a bird's nest atop his head, but he'd managed to loop that winter scarf he always wore around his neck perfectly, somehow. He yawned, stretching his mouth wide enough for Mansaku to see the pointy canines hiding just behind his lips.

Because Atsuya clearly wasn't domesticated yet, he didn't even open his eyes before demanding, "Why is everyone so noisy today?"

That changed quickly, as Coach Kinun gleefully declared, "Our very own Chef Mansaku is making everyone breakfast!"

"Great, I'll have an omelette and toast, two strips of bacon, a glass of orange juice.." He fell quiet under the weight of more than a dozen questioning stares, glancing around the room only to realize there wasn't a single person who _wasn't_ looking at him. "What's everyone staring at?"

Mansaku wondered how many of the others remembered the way Atsuya had taunted him at the Japanese Football Frontier. He didn't have the patience to wait for someone else to remind Atsuya either.

"Are you sure you want the lowly son of a sushi chef preparing your food?" he snapped.

"Agh, you're still mad about that?!"

"You didn't have to bring my father into it, especially when your team barely was playing fair to begin with!"

"Nothing in the rules against hiring a team of disguised cheerleaders to relay inconspicuous secret hand signals to your entire team, bumpkin."

Considering Hokkaido was known for only three things – monkeys, being really cold, and having lots and lots of farmland – there was something very ironic about Atsuya calling him a bumpkin. Mansaku fired back with an appropriate retort, somewhat aware that every other conversation in the room had fallen silent. On the bright side, Atsuya didn't enjoy being called a country bumpkin, which was exactly what Mansaku had been going for. Nor did he enjoy asking when he had time to practice soccer anyway, between square dancing lessons and helping his parents out on the family farm after school.

"One of my parents is a lawyer!" Atsuya snapped back. "The other one coordinates the well-being and success of our household's operations and permanent residents by staying at home."

"Don't try to make stay at home parenting sound like something special."

"It's a respectable and under-appreciated job!"

"Oh my." Coach Kinun rubbed a hand across his chin, but his expression was too neutral for him to have been genuinely worried. "Looks like those two need some space to talk this out. Come along, kids!"

"Huh?" Asuto responded while barely looking away from the scene in front of him – Mansaku standing huffily with his arms crossed, and Atsuya suddenly looking more awake than he'd been a few seconds ago. "But we can't just – "

"Leave our poor Mansaku to clean up after everyone? Don't worry! You and Kirina already did an excellent job of helping in the kitchen. There's nothing left to do."

"That's not what I meant," Asuto muttered.

It was Endou, of all people, who placed a comforting hand on his shoulder and said, "I think he's right, Asuto. There's nothing left that we can help with."

Endou wasn't one to abandon his teammates, but he emphasized the word "we" just strongly enough that Asuto had no choice but to listen. Maybe he and Coach Kinun were right. If Mansaku was still this upset over something that had happened all the way back in Japan's Football Frontier, maybe leaving him and Atsuya alone to work it out themselves was the right thing to do.

Within two minutes, Kinun, with Li Hao's assistance, had shepherded everyone else out of the room, leaving only Atsuya and Mansaku behind.

"You're still mad," Atsuya repeated.

"I'm not mad," Mansaku lied. Acting tough would get him nowhere – it didn't work for Goujin, after all, and having just a few more braincells didn't mean it would work for him either.

Aside from that, he agreed with Coach Kinun. Endou and Asuto too. And the coach's plans were always a little crazy, but they also worked out, somehow – it was obvious that Kinun remembered what had happened at the Football Frontier. The way he'd reacted to Atsuya's taunts, and the way Atsuya had insulted him and his father all in one shot. It would probably be bad for the team's morale if they didn't clear the air between them, and that was obviously what Kinun wanted.

By making breakfast? If this actually worked, it would be that much more evidence to file away in the "Kinun is Secretly a Mad Genius and Possibly Plotting World Domination" folder of Mansaku's mind.

It wasn't like Atsuya was in the mood for breakfast anymore. But declining would have made things worse, and of course there was the issue of not being hungry during practice later. "Eggs," he muttered.

"What kind?"

"Any kind."

Mansaku sighed, and began heating some oil in a pan. Scrambled eggs were easiest. After thinking about it for a moment, he checked how much rice was left in the nearby pot – for omurice. Breakfast of Japanese champions.

"Why is that such a touchy subject for you anyway?"

"You don't know why?" Mansaku asked.

Atsuya shrugged, explaining, "My brother says I have a 'natural gift for pushing people's buttons'. I didn't know you would react like that, it was a guess."

"A sushi chef on an island in the middle of nowhere isn't exactly the most lucrative occupation, even among other islanders. Not to mention the number of times my schoolmates made fun of me for smelling like fish."

Atsuya remained silent. Shirou was probably right, in that he did have a natural talent for pushing buttons, but during conversations like this, he was completely hopeless. Not good with words, at all.

"What about you?" Mansaku asked, mostly to fill the silence. "You said one of your parents was a lawyer. What's the other one do?"

Atsuya shrugged. "Just stays at home, I guess. Does housework."

If Mansaku's mom were still around, that probably would've been her occupation also. Housewife or stay at home mom, whatever people wanted to call it. Coordinator of the well-being of their household, or whatever.

"...I'm not even that mad anymore," Mansaku admitted.

"Really?" Atsuya said. "But you definitely were, about five minutes ago!"

"Five minutes ago. I'm over it now. It's pointless to stay upset over something like that."

Even after Mansaku finished his food, Atsuya barely touched his plate. Or looked at Mansaku. Didn't say "thank you" either. He picked up his chopsticks, once, and immediately set them back down. Although he hadn't looked away from his eggs once since Mansaku had set his plate down, gently, with only the softest tap on the table, it was obvious that he was thinking about something else.

"What about you?" Atsuya's voice was small, quiet.

"What about me?"

For a moment, Mansaku was genuinely confused. They'd already talked about him. His feelings about what had happened at the Football Frontier. That was a thing of the past – even if Atsuya didn't think it was, Mansaku was forcing it to be. For the sake of the team.

Wordlessly, Atsuya stood up. He walked to the counter, where the hotel's portable stove tops were turned off, but still plugged in. Where there was still some miscellaneous bacon and bread and roughly half a box of eggs, that Mansaku would inevitably have to put away by himself, because Coach Kinun and everyone else had already _ditched_.

Atsuya reached into the box for an egg, and cracked it against the side of one of the pans.

Badly.

He didn't coat the pan with cooking spray first, and when the egg shattered against the rim, he made a disgusted, squeaky noise in protest. Dropping what was left of the egg on the counter, Atsuya yanked his hand back and shook it, trying to get rid of the egg goo and the bits of the shell that were stuck to him now.

Laughing, Mansaku realized what was happening. Two things, simultaneously – Atsuya's intentions and Coach Kinun's latest team building strategy.

"How much do you know about making an omelette?" Mansaku asked.

Atsuya slunk behind him, turning one of the hotel's white dish cloths yellow by rubbing it across his hands. "Eggs," he muttered.

"You clearly need some help," Mansaku said, momentarily forgetting that he wasn't supposed to like Atsuya with another laugh.

**Bonus:**

"What should we do with all these leftover eggs?"

"...Save them for tomorrow, maybe?"

Downstairs, in the hotel lobby, Coach and Li Hao had a different idea. Li Hao was busy, putting the final marker strokes on a sign that read **Today Only, Mansaku and Atsuya's Special Breakfast Buffet!** , followed bya list ofpossible menu items. All reasonably priced to sell out before hotel security caught onto what they were doing, in Li Hao's opinion. "All sales will be used for the benefit of Inazuma Japan," he said, smiling.


End file.
